'You're not going to preach now, are you.'
'No, actually I wanted—'
'Oh, come on, soldier. You want something back for this, don't you. My soul, for example.'
Jon shivered in his uniform. 'It's not me who deals with souls, Fredriksen. But I can arrange for food, so—'
'Oh, you can manage a little sermon first.'
'As I said—'
'A sermon!'
Jon stood looking at Fredriksen.
'Give us a sermon with that wet little cunt-hole of yours!' Fredriksen yelled. 'A sermon so that we can eat with a good conscience, you condescending Christian bastard. Come on, get it over with. What's God's message today?'
Jon opened his mouth and closed it again. Swallowed. Tried again and this time his vocal cords responded. 'The message is that He gave His only son, who died . . . for our sins.'
'You're lying!'
* * *
'No, I'm afraid I'm not, 'Harry said, observing the terrified face of the man in the doorway in front of him. There was a smell of lunch and a rattle of cutlery in the background. A family man. A father. Until now. The man scratched his forearm and gazed at a spot above Harry's head as if someone were there. The scratching made an unpleasant rasping noise.
The rattle of cutlery had stopped. The shuffle of feet came to a halt behind the man and a small hand was placed on his shoulder. A woman's face with large red eyes peeped out.
'What is it, Birger?'
'This policeman has something to tell us,' Birger said in a monotone.
'What?' the woman said looking at Harry. 'Is it about our son? Is it about Per?'
'Yes, fru Holmen,' Harry said and saw the fear steal into her eyes. He searched for the impossible words. 'We found him two hours ago. Your son is dead.'
He had to look away.
'But he . . . he . . . where . . . ?' Her eyes jumped from Harry to the man who kept scratching his arm.
Won't be long before he draws blood, Harry thought, and cleared his throat. 'In a container by the harbour. What we feared. He's been dead for a good while.'
Birger Holmen seemed to lose his balance, staggered backwards into the lit hallway and grabbed a hatstand. The woman stepped forward and Harry saw the man fall to his knees behind her.
Harry breathed in and shoved his hand inside his coat. The metal hip flask was ice-cold against his fingertips. He found what he was looking for and pulled out an envelope. He hadn't written the letter, but knew the contents all too well. The brief official notification of death, stripped of all the verbiage. The bureaucratic act of pronouncing death.
'I'm sorry, but it's my job to give you this.'
* * *
'Your job to do what?' said the small, middle-aged man with the exaggerated
mondaine
French pronunciation uncharacteristic of the upper classes but of those who strive to belong. The visitor studied him. Everything matched the photograph in the envelope, even the mean-spirited tie-knot and the loose red smoking jacket.
He didn't know what this man had done wrong. He doubted it had been physical because despite the irritation in his expression his body language was defensive, almost anxious, even in the door to his own home. Had he been stealing money, embezzling? He could be the type to work with figures. But not the big sums. His attractive wife notwithstanding, he looked more like the kind who helped himself to small change here and there. He might have been unfaithful, might have slept with the wife of the wrong man. No. As a rule, short men with above average assets and wives much more attractive than themselves are more concerned with her infidelity. The man annoyed him. He slipped his hand into his pocket.
'This,' he said, resting the barrel of a Llama Minimax, which he had bought for just three hundred dollars, on the taut brass door chain, 'is my job.'
He pointed the silencer. It was a plain metal tube, made by a gunsmith in Zagreb, and screwed to the barrel. The black gaffer tape lashed round where the two parts met was to make it airtight. Of course, he could have bought a so-called quality silencer for over a hundred euros, but why? No one could silence the sound of a bullet breaking the sound barrier, of the hot gas meeting the cold air and the mechanical metal parts striking each other. Pistols with silencers that sounded like popcorn under a lid were pure Hollywood.
The explosion was like the crack of a whip. He pressed his face against the narrow opening.
The man in the photo was gone; he had fallen backwards without a sound. The hall was dark, but in the wall mirror he saw the sliver of light from the door and his magnified eye framed in gold. The dead man lay on a thick burgundy carpet. Persian? Perhaps he had had money after all?
Now he had a little hole in his forehead.
He looked up and met the eyes of the wife. If it was his wife. She was standing in the doorway of another room. Behind her, a large, yellow oriental lamp. She had her hand in front of her mouth and was staring at him. He gave a brief nod. Then he carefully closed the door, put the gun back in his shoulder holster and began to walk down the stairs. He never used the lift when he was making his getaway. Or rented cars or motorbikes or anything else that could malfunction. And he didn't run. He didn't talk or shout; the voice could be identified.
The getaway was the most critical part of the job, but also the part he loved best. It was like flying, a dreamless nothing.
The concierge, a woman, had come out of her flat on the ground floor and watched him in bewilderment. He whispered an
Au revoir,
madame
, but she glared back in silence. When she was questioned by the police in an hour's time, they would ask her for a description. And she would oblige. A man, normal appearance, medium height. Twenty years old. Or thirty perhaps. Not forty anyway, she thought.
He emerged into the street. The low rumble of Paris, like thunder that never came any closer, but never stopped either. He discarded his Llama Minimax in a skip he had chosen for the purpose beforehand. Two new, unfired guns from the same manufacturer awaited his return in Zagreb. He had been given a bulk-purchase discount.
When the airport bus passed Porte de la Chapelle half an hour later, on the motorway between Paris and Charles de Gaulle, the air was full of snowflakes. They settled on the scattered strands of pale yellow straw pointing stiffly upwards to the grey sky.
After checking in for his flight and going through security control, he went straight to the men's toilets. He stood at the end of the line of white bowls, unbuttoned and sprayed the white urinal blocks at the bottom of the bowl. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the sweet smell of paradichlorobenzene and the lemon fragrance enhancer from J & J Chemicals. The connecting line to freedom had one stop left. He rolled the name on his tongue. Os-lo.
3
Sunday, 14 December. The Bite.
I
N THE RED ZONE ON THE SIXTH FLOOR OF
P
OLICE
HQ,
THE
concrete and glass colossus with the largest concentration of police in Norway, Harry sat back in his chair in room 605. This was the office that Halvorsen – the young policeman Harry shared the ten square metres with – liked to call the Clearing House. And that Harry, when Halvorsen had to be taken down a peg or two, called In-House Training.
But at this moment Harry was on his own, staring at the wall where the window might have been if the Clearing House had such a thing.
It was Sunday; he had written the report and could go home. So why didn't he? Through the imaginary window he saw the fenced-off harbour in Bjørvika where fresh snow lay like confetti on the green, red and blue containers. The case was solved. Per Holmen, a young heroin addict, had had enough of life and had taken his final shot inside a container. From a gun. No external signs of violence; the gun down by his side. As far as the undercover boys knew, Per Holmen did not owe any money. When dealers execute junkies with debts, they don't usually try to camouflage it as something else. Quite the contrary. A cut-and-dried case of suicide then. So why waste the evening ferreting round a grim, wind-blown container terminal where all he would find was more sorrow and grief?
Harry looked at his woollen coat hanging on the hatstand. The small hip flask in the inside pocket was full. And untouched since he went to the
vinmonopol
in October, bought a bottle of his worst enemy, Jim Beam, and filled his flask before emptying the rest down the sink. Since then he had carried the poison on him, a bit like the way Nazis kept cyanide pills in the soles of their shoes. Why bother with such a stupid idea? He didn't know. He didn't have to know. It worked.
Harry looked at the clock. Soon be eleven. At home he had a much used espresso machine and a DVD he had put by for just such an evening as this.
All About Eve
, Mankiewicz's 1950 masterpiece with Bette Davis and George Sanders.
He took an internal reading. And knew it was going to be the harbour.
Harry had turned up the lapels of his coat and stood with his back to the north wind that blew right through the tall fence in front of him and formed snowdrifts around the containers on the inside. The harbour area and the large, empty expanses looked like a desert at night.
The enclosed container terminal was illuminated, but the lamp posts swayed in the gusting wind and the metal boxes piled up in twos or threes cast shadows over the streets. The particular one Harry had his eye on was red and something of a colour clash with the orange police tape. But it was a great refuge on a December night in Oslo, with almost identical measurements and the same level of comfort as the security cells in the custody block at Police HQ.
The report by the Crime Scene Unit – though it was hardly a unit, numbering one detective and one technician – said the container had stood empty for a while. Unlocked. The site watchman had explained that they didn't bother much about locking empty containers as the area was fenced off and, furthermore, under surveillance. Nevertheless a drug addict had got in. Per Holmen, he supposed, had been one of the many who had hung out around Bjørvika, which was a mere stone's throw from the junkies' supermarket in Plata. Perhaps the watchman had turned a blind eye to them using the containers as accommodation? Perhaps he knew that in so doing they had saved the odd life or two?
There was no lock on the container, but there was a big, fat padlock on the gate in the fence. Harry regretted that he hadn't rung from HQ to say he was coming. If there were any guards here, he couldn't see any.
Harry checked his watch. Deliberated and surveyed the top of the fence. He was in good shape. Better than for a long time. He hadn't touched alcohol since the catastrophe last summer, and he had been training on a regular basis in the police gym. More than regular. Before the snow came, he had broken Tom Waaler's old steeplechase record in Økern. A few days later Halvorsen had cautiously asked if all the training had anything to do with Rakel. Because his impression was that they weren't seeing each other any more. Harry had explained to the young officer in a curt yet clear way that they might share an office but not a private life. Halvorsen had shrugged, asked who else Harry talked to and had his assumption confirmed when Harry got up and marched out of room 605.
Three metres. No barbed wire. Easy. Harry caught hold of the fence as high as he could, put his feet against the fence post and straightened up. Right arm up, then left, hung with arms outstretched until his feet got a grip. Caterpillar movements. He swung himself over to the other side.
He raised the bolt and pulled open the door of the container, took out his solid, black army torch, ducked under the police tape and went in.
It was eerily quiet inside; sound seemed to have been frozen, too.
Harry switched on the torch and shone it inside the container. In the cone of light he could see the chalk outline on the floor where they had found Holmen. Beate Lønn, head of Forensics in the new building in Brynsalléen, had shown him the pictures. Holmen had been sitting with his back to the wall with a hole in his right temple and the gun on his right. Very little blood. That was the advantage of shots to the head. The only one. The gun fired ammunition of a modest calibre, so the entry wound was small and there was no exit wound. Forensics would find the bullet in the skull where it would have bounced around like a pinball and pulped what Per Holmen had once thought with, made this decision with, and at the end ordered his forefinger to press the trigger with.
'Incomprehensible,' his colleagues tended to say when they discovered young people who had chosen to take their lives. Harry assumed they said that to protect themselves, to reject the whole idea of it. If not, he didn't understand what they meant by it being incomprehensible.
All the same, that was the word he himself had used this afternoon standing at the entrance and looking down the hallway at Holmen's father on his knees, his back bent, shaking with sobs. And since Harry had had no words of comfort to say about death, God, redemption, life afterwards or the sense of it all, he had just mumbled the same feeble: 'Incomprehensible . . .'
Harry switched off the torch and put it in his coat pocket; the darkness closed in around him.
He thought of his own father. Olav Hole, the retired teacher and widower living in a house in Oppsal. Of how his eyes lit up when Harry, or Sis, visited him once a month and how the light slowly faded as they drank coffee and talked about things of little import. Anything of meaning had pride of place in a photo on the piano she had once played. Olav Hole did almost nothing now. Read his books. About countries and empires he would never see, and in fact no longer had any desire to see, since she could not join him. 'The greatest loss of all,' he said on the few occasions they talked about her. And what Harry was thinking about now was what Olav Hole would call the day they went to tell him his son was dead.
Harry left the container and walked towards the fence. Grabbed hold of it with his hands. Then there was one of those strange moments of sudden total silence when the wind catches its breath to listen or change its mind and all that is heard is the reassuring rumble of the town in the winter darkness. That, and the sound of wind-borne paper scraping against the tarmac. But the wind had dropped. It wasn't paper, it was steps. Quick, light steps. Lighter than footsteps.